Art is not a Thing, It is a Way

We don’t know why some pieces of art move us the way they do. Regardless of whether the piece is post-modern, minimalist, conceptual or expressionist, you will always have the voices of the cynical, the ones who claim theycould have created it. Yet, in reality, very few of us are able to see the world the way a true artist can see it.

To some, Edvard Munch’s The Scream is just a clever collaboration of swirling colors, with an eerie reductive figure placed in the foreground. To others however the 1895 painting shows a distinct image of anxiety, distress, and pure unadulterated agony. The individual’s environment is distorted, the sky is blood red and it is clear that there is, as Munch once said himself, an infinite scream passing through nature.

The fourth version of The Scream is causing quite a stir in the art world this week as Norwegian businessman Petter Olsen offers the piece to Sotheby’s to be auctioned off in New York, May 2nd, 2012. The print is meant to go for an impressive $80 million, so best to start saving those pennies now.